David Lean Returns To Cannes In ‘Maverick’ Documentary, Exploring How Director Overcame Father’s Scorn To Become One Of Cinema’s Greatest

David Lean could shoot a landscape like no one else – in India, in Ceylon, in Jordan – filling the screen with stunning imagery.

“I like spectacle,” he once told an interviewer.

But he could also capture the landscape of the human face: Peter O’Toole’s crystal blue eyes against an azure sky; the dark eyes and chiseled jawline of Omar Sharif, the dreamy beauty of Julie Christie, even the less glamorous but equally transfixing visages of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson.

Lean’s supreme cinematic gifts, expressed on both a grand and intimate scale, come into focus in the documentary Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean, directed by Barnaby Thompson. It premieres Sunday, May 17 at the Cannes Film Festival in the official Cannes Classics section.

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